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Mackerel, Fried, French
Bone three fine mackerel, removing the heads and tails, dry them well in a cloth, or rub a little flour into them, so as to remove all moisture, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and fry lightly in hot dripping to cover them. They should be of a fine golden colour, and well drained. Place them on a dish, and either pour the following sauce over them, or serve in a tureen. Stew the bones of the fish in half a pint of stock, add a thickening of butter and browned flour, say, one ounce of butter and a tea-spoonful of flour, well worked up together, the juice of a lemon, and a little browning to colour it. Or, if preferred, serve the fish with mustard-sauce, in which a table-spoonful of some good store sauce, such as Reading, Worcester, or Harvey, has been stirred. Time, about fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d. each. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward shallow-fry with a quick fish-bone gravy made from the trimmings. Two things need attention: the frying time, which is written for whole boned fish and will ruin fillets, and the thickening, which is short on flour by modern reckoning.
- Buy the fish very freshMackerel is oily and deteriorates faster than almost any other fish on the slab; the eyes should be clear and the flesh stiff. A fish that smells strongly of anything but the sea has been out too long, and no amount of frying will retrieve it.
- "Bone three fine mackerel"This most likely means opening the fish along the belly and lifting out the backbone, leaving the two sides joined at the skin — a kipper-style butterfly rather than two separate fillets, though the recipe does not spell it out. Ask the fishmonger for it, and keep the frames for the sauce, which is built on the bones.
- Time, about fifteen minutesThis is likely the whole operation rather than the pan alone, and in any case it is longer than butterflied mackerel needs: about three to four minutes on the skin side and a minute or two on the flesh side; single fillets need less. Cook it until the flesh just parts and stop.
- Dripping and "hot fat to cover them"Dripping and "hot dripping to cover them" -- Beef dripping was a common frying medium of the period and gives good colour; any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. "To cover" here probably means a generous shallow layer in the pan rather than a deep-fryer's worth.
- Half a pint of stockAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Simmer the bones in it for fifteen or twenty minutes and strain; longer does nothing useful and can turn the stock bitter.
- The thickeningOne ounce of butter to a teaspoon of flour is far more butter than the flour can carry, and the sauce is likely to stay thin and may separate. For a beurre manié use equal weights — about ½ oz (1 tbsp) butter worked into ½ oz (2 tbsp) flour — and whisk it into the simmering stock in small pieces.
- Browned flour and "a little browning"Browned flour is plain flour toasted dry in a pan until nut-coloured, which adds flavour but thickens less than raw flour. "Browning" is caramel colouring, sold then in bottles as gravy browning; it is cosmetic and can be left out.
- Store saucesHarvey's and Cocks's Reading Sauce are no longer made; Worcestershire is the survivor of the group and stands in for all three. A tablespoon stirred into a plain mustard sauce is the whole idea — sharpness and salt against oily fish.
- YieldThree butterflied mackerel will feed four generously rather than the five or six claimed, unless there is a substantial spread of other dishes.
Mackerel had a particular status in nineteenth-century London: because it spoils so quickly, it was one of the few goods exempt from Sunday trading restrictions, and street criers were permitted to sell it on Sunday mornings. That perishability shaped how it was cooked — hard and fast, close to the point of purchase, and almost always with something sharp alongside to cut the oil. English kitchens leaned on gooseberry sauce or fennel; the mustard sauce and the bottled store sauces offered here are the Victorian shortcut to the same effect. What makes this version "French" in Cassell's eyes is the little brown sauce built from the fish's own bones and finished with a butter-and-flour thickening and lemon — a domesticated echo of restaurant practice, where nothing edible is thrown away and the garnish carries as much of the dish as the fish does. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, first issued in the 1870s, routinely quotes cost per portion like this; fourpence to sixpence a fish places mackerel firmly among the cheap proteins of the period.